Presents lesson plans, classroom activities, and worksheets for teachers of English Language Arts to help them meet the Common Core State Standards in their English curriculum.

The authors delve into important topics such as assessment, implementation, and curriculum--as well as the implications of the Common Core for special populations such as English learners, students with disabilities, and gifted and talented students. In addition to a focus on disciplinary literacy throughout the book, there is an entire chapter devoted to helping you teach students to use disciplinary strategies to engage, guide, and extend their thinking. The second part of this book is even more exciting: a detailed look at each of the College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading, combined with practical guidance on how to use those Standards to teach your middle school and high school students. Each Standard is aligned with accessible, appropriate, research-based strategies to help you integrate the ELA Standards into a series of rich, connected, instructional tasks. Classroom applications, student examples, and valuable teaching tools make this the resource you'll turn to again and again as you implement the CCSS in your classroom, school, and district.

New hope for our students who struggle most Under the best of circumstances meeting the Common Core can be a challenge. But if you’re a teacher of academically and linguistically diverse students—and who isn’t these days—then that “challenge” may sometimes feel more like a “fantasy.” Finally, here are two expert educators who are brave enough, knowledgeable enough, and grounded enough to tackle this issue. Armed with this resource’s advice, tools, and strategies, you’ll Better understand the 32 ELA anchor standards Learn more about the specific skills “uncommon learners” need to master them Discover new research-based teaching strategies aligned to each standard

Using a rich array of research-based practices, this book will help teachers improve the academic writing of English learners. It provides specific teaching strategies, activities, and extended lessons to develop EL students’ narrative, informational, and argumentative writing, emphasized in the Common Core State Standards. It also explores the challenges each of these genres pose for ELs and suggests ways to scaffold instruction to help students become confident and competent academic writers. Showcasing the work of exemplary school teachers who have devoted time and expertise to creating rich learning environments for the secondary classroom, Helping English Learners to Write includes artifacts and written work produced by students with varying levels of language proficiency as models of what students can accomplish. Each chapter begins with a brief overview and ends with a short summary of the key points. “These authors are at the very forefront of scientifically testing and validating instructional practices for improving the writing and reading of adolescents who are English learners. Why is their research so good? It is informed by years of experience in the classroom and working with hundreds of teachers across California. What a powerful combination. My advice: ingest, consider, and employ the strategies described here. Your students will become better writers if you do.” —From the Foreword by Steve Graham, Warner Professor of Educational Leadership & Innovation, Arizona State University “This book is a tour de force. It’s up-to-the-minute in offering what teachers and administrators need, and what parents want. With examples of classrooms in action, it incorporates what research tells us about effective teaching and learning, and what the Common Core Standards and related policy are demanding, into successful and engaging activities that the authors' extensive research shows works. Helping English Learners to Write is a must-read. You will dog ear many pages for future use.” —Judith A. Langer, Vincent O’Leary Distinguished Research Professor, Director, Center on English Learning & Achievement, University at Albany

Design effective CCSS-aligned lessons for secondary students If you want to revamp your secondary English Language Arts curriculum to reflect the Common Core State Standards, this book is the perfect resource. The authors move the implementation of the CCSS for ELA from the abstract to the concrete by providing adaptable, exemplar lesson plans in each of the CCSS strands: reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language. Each lesson template includes: Intended grade level band, timeline, and the type of student writing involved Connections to supporting theory, including the Backward Design model Variations to differentiate the lesson for diverse student populations Ways to link the lesson to technology and service learning Reproducible handouts The lesson narratives also give tips for incorporating technology into lessons and connecting them to enduring theorists in education (Dewey, Bloom, and Gardner). The final section offers collaboration strategies for connecting via technology to colleagues beyond the school building and working together on CCSS-based ELA lessons. This practical, easy-to-use guide will help you navigate the most efficient route to creating standards-based lessons that optimize student learning.

Timely, thoughtful, and comprehensive, this text directly supports pre-service and in-service teachers in developing curriculum and instruction that both addresses and exceeds the requirements of the Common Core State Standards. Adopting a critical inquiry approach, it demonstrates how the Standards’ highest and best intentions for student success can be implemented from a critical, culturally relevant perspective firmly grounded in current literacy learning theory and research. It provides specific examples of teachers using the critical inquiry curriculum framework of identifying problems and issues, adopting alternative perspectives, and entertaining change in their classrooms to illustrate how the Standards can not only be addressed but also surpassed through engaging instruction. The Second Edition provides new material on adopting a critical inquiry approach to enhance student engagement and critical thinking planning instruction to effectively implement the CCSS in the classroom fostering critical response to literary and informational texts using YA literature and literature by authors of color integrating drama activities into literature and speaking/listening instruction teaching informational, explanatory, argumentative, and narrative writing working with ELL students to address the language Standards using digital tools and apps to respond to and create digital texts employing formative assessment to provide supportive feedback preparing students for the PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments using the book’s wiki site http://englishccss.pbworks.com for further resources

Teaching Middle School Language Arts is the first book on teaching middle school language arts for multiple intelligences and related 21st century literacies in technologically and ethnically diverse communities. More than 670,000 middle school teachers (grades six through eight) are responsible for educating nearly 13 million students in public and private schools. Thousands more teachers join these ranks annually, especially in the South and West, where ethnic populations are ballooning. Teachers and administrators seek practical, time-efficient ways of teaching language arts to 21st century adolescents in increasingly multicultural, technologically diverse, socially networked communities. They seek sound understanding, practical advice, and proven strategies for connecting diverse literature to 21st century societies while meeting state and professional standards. Teaching Middle School Language Arts provides strategies and resources that work. Roseboro's book provides an entire academic year of inspiring theory and instruction in multimedia reading, writing, and speaking for the 21st century literacies that are increasingly required in the United States and Canada. An appendix includes supplementary documents to adapt or adopt, and a companion web site is designed to continue communication with readers.